Live music’s COVID stress test awaits. It’s a tennis tournament [Op-Ed]

Victoria has passed one trial, another major stress test awaits. And the music world should take notice.

Summer is here, cricket is back on the tele and the eastern states are all set to reopen.

It could be so much worse. Take a glance at the situation in the United States, which set an unwanted record on the weekend with upwards of four million COVID cases for November, more than twice the previous mark set the previous month.

That’s roughly the population of Melbourne, infected.

In the States, where the Thanksgiving break should pound waistlines and the COVID charts, it’ll get worse before it gets better.

Closer to home, the biggest music festivals are sitting it out. Falls Festival, Woodford Folk Festival, Lost Paradise and many others are pushing back their programmes by a year when, we’re reliably informed, a vaccine maybe, possibly, could be ready for the masses.

Next Easter’s Bluesfest, the traditional festival-season closer, is still very much on the cards.

Bluesfest

There’s a lot of time between now and then. Time for procedures to improve, for infection rates to disappear, or go horribly pearshaped.

Before that, a huge test will play out, as usual, at Melbourne Park for the Australian Open, the traditional first major tennis tournament of the year.

The Australian Open has always stood alone. Played on the other side of the world, the first of four majors is often held during stifling heat, when most of the tourists are coming in from a northern winter. Bjorn Borg, the retired Swedish great, only played the tournament once during his career. He swerved it most years, instead focusing on the clay of Roland Garros.

Others will dodge it this year. But there will be a swarm of visitors, with officials and athletes expected to number more than 1,000, many coming from COVID hotspots in Europe and North America.

With its unlovable border controls and quarantine, Australia can show the world how it’s done.

Speaking on the ABC’s ‘Offsiders,’ studio guest Waleed Aly recounted comments from tennis pro John Millman, who noted players overseas “can’t understand the approach” to COVID which got Australia to where it is: close to zero community transmissions. “There’s the strictness of quarantine, they don’t get the whole thing,” Aly said. “Our handling of the pandemic is so aberrant by world standards. No one else has really done it quite like us and New Zealand.”

Music and sport are close friends. Always have been.

Earlier this year, the music industry joined forces with its counterparts in sport for the Live Entertainment Industry Forum (LEIF), a working group with an MO to safely guide those industries out of hibernation and bring back jobs, fans and punters.

Its committee members will have their eyes on the ball that is the Aus Open, the final of which is played at Rod Laver Arena, a bucket-list venue for live musicians.

How it all plays out, and how Victoria handles the situation, will impact the nature of touring for the foreseeable future.

Victoria, the challenge is yours. Time to ace it.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.